In a general display device, a single pixel is comprised of three subpixels respectively representing red, green and blue, which are the three primary colors of light, thereby conducting a display operation in colors.
A conventional display device, however, can reproduce colors that fall within only a narrow range (which is usually called a “color reproduction range”), which is a problem. If the color reproduction range is narrow, then some of the object colors (i.e., the colors of various objects existing in Nature, see Non-Patent Document No. 1) cannot be represented. Thus, to broaden the color reproduction range of display devices, a technique for increasing the number of primary colors for use to perform a display operation has recently been proposed.
For example, Patent Document No. 1 discloses a display device which conducts a display operation using six primary colors, and also discloses a display device which conducts a display operation using four primary colors and a display device which conducts a display operation using five primary colors as well. An example of such a display device which conducts a display operation using six primary colors is shown in FIG. 25. In the display device 800 shown in FIG. 25, a single pixel P is comprised of red, green, blue, cyan, magenta and yellow subpixels R, G, B, C, M and Ye. This display device 800 conducts a display operation in colors by mixing together the six primary colors of red, green, blue, cyan, magenta and yellow that are represented by these six subpixels.
By increasing the number of primary colors for use to conduct a display operation (i.e., by performing a display operation using four or more primary colors), the color reproduction range can be broadened compared to a conventional display device that uses only the three primary colors for display purposes. Such a display device that conducts a display operation using four or more primary colors will be referred to herein as a “multi-primary-color display device”. On the other hand, a display device that conducts a display operation using the three primary colors (i.e., a typical conventional display device) will be referred to herein as a “three-primary-color display device”.